Chocolate and Icecream.
Treats.
(that was our table @ halloween, courtesy of someone else paying for the chocolate)
We all like treats. I like chocolate. I like it every few days, so a £1 pack of 4 lasts me a week. DS has a piece a day as does OH. That means they cost nearly £4 a week. And then theres the icecream lollies OH likes. There goes another 1 a day.
I know we all need treats. But this is getting expensive. All the double deckers have gone from last week, as have the icecreams. Which means we'll go into asda again this week and I'll feel I have to buy treats.
i pay for all the groceries, I do all the cooking.
I didn't make cake or pie therefor I had a jam sarny as something sweet at dinnertime and nothing at teatime.
I can do without.
I don't feel I can ask everyone else to do the same.
i wish I didn't have such a problem talking about money.
Today we bought some paint. I say we as I paid £40 of the £60 cost as OH didn't have enough. Watch this space as he said I'll give you the money back.
For the next few weeks I'm gonna try and not spend anything I really don't need.
I wanna fill the tin up to £1000by my birthday in april.
There's £630 in there now, but I have 3 family birthdays between now and then.
I shall try.
BBS x
It took me 6 years to get rid of my debt.
Three catalogues, 2 credit cards. None of which i should have been allowed to have in the first place. I even told the tesco card lady that I was on income support at the time (A while ago now) and she just said how much do you get? Oh thats enough 'earnings' to have a credit card. And the limit just kept going up. And on income support with 2 kids alot of the time it was how we ate, or heated. The last thing I managed to pay off was my overdraft as that was the cheapest form of 'borrowing' I could use.
And I am so glad its gone, trying to find the minimum payment every month was such a struggle. And on the minimum payment it never got any less. So I concentrated on one until it was paid then just moved along to the next.
Life is better without that hanging round my neck.
Trouble is I may have payed mine off but beloved hasn't. All the time I've been scrimping and careful, he had a debt that matched mine. I threw away all the catalogues and cut up the credit cards. It was the only way. Don't have them can't use them.
I suggested he cut up his card too. But i might need it for emergencies was his reply. That was 7 years ago now. Its still in his wallet and he still uses it.
Trouble is that means the debt is hanging around near me too, it affects me too even though he doesn't think it does. "I need £ to make this months payment, can I borrow some till this cheque clears? "
And the IOU's annoy me. Especially when he forgets them. Like the receipt for petfood thats sitting on the noticeboard. Just under £40.
And just got the leccy bill :( over 250 cos the vat goes up if its over a certain amount. And he doesn't help with that either even though he uses it for his business.
How cold do you go?
14.7 degrees in the living room today before I lit the fire!
Thats definitely another jumper kinda chilly!
Must be something to do with reading the electric meter. I gave the readings in online so I don't know how much it will be yet, but it won't be under £100 I know that!
At least the hot flushes warm me up some of the time!! Great if your hands get cold!!
Swapped some of my pennies from the jar today, so thats next months aldi shopping paid for. All in little money bags, one a week with £20 in each.
I know its not alot but its enough to tide us over.
It's no good, my eyes are tired!
BBS x
Well...here's the receipt! And yes, beloved put things in the trolley! Dog treats, biscuits, and kitchen towels! Ah well, at least I had just enough to pay for it. As we were stood at the till he picked up 1.99 batteries. I didn't say a word and he put them back. We don't have 'posh' batteries. It's either 99p land for clocks or rechargable for everything else! And as I haven't been able to walk too far, we're nearly out of cheap batteries! Have to do without!
I swear it's mainly bread on the list. And again, I normally make some homemade sourdough, but I can't stand too long so thats kneading bread out. I have a breadmaker, but why use electric when I have hands that work just as well? (and while I was in hospital my dear beloved didn't know what to do with sourdough and threw it out..I'm smiling inside..honest)
There's my treat on there too! Creme fraiche! It makes one evening meal with pasta and veg, then the rest gets added to cheese and potato pie to give it a cheesy tang which means I can use less actual cheese!
Tomorrow is leccy meter reading day...I'll let you know how horrific that is!!
Put some more money in the saving tin. And no one knows about this so no IOU's are gonna get put in there and not be paid back...grrr.
We're both self employed. So money can be irregular. And beloved isn't good at budgeting for things that he knows are coming. He relies on me having money he can borrow.
Hohum.
Anyway BBS x
Here's the list book..just for lists! And this is this weeks shopping, to keep me on budget for this month. Notice the total already crossed out!
That gives me £2 to play with if lettuce and tomatoes aren't too much. Thats 2 teas and five lunches at least taken care of, everything else should be in the freezer or on a shelf (she says hopefully)
I guess thats another thing about rural living. I like to have a good supply of canned food and the freezer stocked all the time.
I'll put the receipt on here tomorrow, see how ell or badly I do! To be honest theres £18 in a money bag and that really is my shopping money! So no extras really.
I really need to be mean to myself, I have a real problem with books. Cookbooks! charity shops, amazon, alot of cookbooks. And the thing is I normally look online if I want a recipe! least I could sell the books if things get bad. And I've been looking at things I really don't need that could find a new home somewhere else. we shall see. Oh lord and its leccy meter reading time again. Hate o think how much that will be.
BBS x with a receipt and possibly a guilty look on my face!
Bread. It's always bread we run out of. So we go to the supermarket and I spend more than I want. This time it was a valentine card for my son. And treats for the dog.
i wouldn't mind if other half was happy with sandwiches. he used to be. And on delivery day he was allowed a pack of rolls. Then we discovered aldi sold rolls nearly half the price of asda and just as good. Then he wanted something to go in the rolls.
Notice how its adding up?
Homemade soup and bread is pennies.
Homemade soup and homemade rolls is less.
Big rolls and ham is about 50p for one person.
Then add the apple pie he likes..11p each.
So I bake homemade pie and homemade doughnuts and homemade cakes.
But I've definitely got to keep more of an eye on what gets put in the trolley. Today I noticed him with tools..he put them back and said he'd have to come back when he had some money.
Thank goodness because I had £10 in a money bag!
So, my trail for this week, is writing a list, with the prices, and being right when I get to the till.
I have £17 left in this months bugdet and I don't wanna go over.
I'll let you know the list tomorrow!BBS x
I've been trying to figure out the roots to why I fear poverty so much.
It's not benefits street or anything modern.
I wondered for a start if it was my great grandmother, who I spent alot of time with as a child. That was her dish.
'Waste not Want not'. Sums her up, or as my mother says, she was tight!
But it wasn't her.
And it wasn't my mum and dad. They always gave me the best they could, though the one toy from childhood that I still have is a ragdoll my mum made me.
So it wasn't them.
In my heart I know what it was. Late 1980's, early 90's. First husband. Interest rates were rising. He left the air force. He wouldn't get a job. Not couldn't, wouldn't. So we had to sell our house. It took 3 months and everything went to pay the mortgage, he tried to do up old cars to sell. We just made it.
Then we had to sleep in bunkbeds, in my old room with our 1 year old daughter. Then in a tiny caravan. We ate veg mainly as that was what I grew. Carrot curry. Seriously.
He still wouldn't find a job. The training he could have paid for by the raf so he could get a job he used staying with his friend in cornwall and surfing, he was supposed to be learning to make surf boards. So we lived on what I could earn. The most was £50 a week. And that included nappies. He wouldn't go on the dole. Because they'd find him work.
I remember sitting with my daughter on my lap, in her last nappy, my legs getting wet, knowing I couldn't afford another pack.
Thats where my fear of poverty comes from. That utter hopelessness of "what do I do, what CAN I do?"
I had to borrow money from my family. Thats what I did. They were there for me and always have been. Lucky.
But that feeling of, what can we eat, how can I make this go further...for my daughters first birthday i made her playdough and a ragdoll. She didn't know it was cheap. She had my old dolls crib and I made her bedding from old clothes. Remade.
We didn't stay together for long after he kept refusing to work. Refusing to support his family.
When we split up the only good thing he could say about me was....
"She made good soup"
So, my roots are in the past, but my fears are for the future. And it'll be ok, because, after all....I CAN make good soup!
